[Mike Nolan]

I've looked at a number of recipes for vegetable stock. Onions, carrots, celery, bay leaf, peppercorns and garlic are common ingredients. (Personally, I'd leave out the garlic, of course.)

There seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether or not a vegetable stock should include tomatoes. When I was researching recipes for Minestrone, some of which called for vegetable stock and others for chicken stock, if the stock didn't have tomatoes in it, the recipe often called for adding them.

The CIA's textbook for cooks says to use NON-STARCHY vegetables for stock. Mushrooms, leeks, parsnips, parsley and turnips can all be added to the list given earlier.

Older editions of the Joy of Cooking recommended using the tops and peels from non-starchy vegetables to make stock, and also suggested saving the water from boiling vegetables as well as cereals.

Escoffier doesn't give a recipe for vegetable stock, he does give one for court bouillon, which is used for poaching fish. His recipe for court bouillon includes vinegar or wine that has been boiled.

Potato water is sometimes used as a thickening agent.

[Mike Nolan]

My favorite whisk is a Zyllis Easy Clean, but ATK absolutely hated it when they tested whisks some years back.

[Mike Nolan]

There are several online sources for the miracle berry, you can even buy a plant from fast-growing-trees.com. (While it is a zone 9-11 plant, they claim it can be grown indoors.) I recently bought a new Meyer Lemon tree from them.

[Mike Nolan]

We had macaroni and cheese for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making pizza tonight, using the Roman dough recipe in Peter Reinhart's "American Pie" book. (This is an ultra-thin dough recipe.)

BTW, Peter has a note on his pizzaquest blog, he's working on a pan pizza book.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got a Zojirushi rice maker that I probably paid $50 for, but that was many years ago. It has a simple on/off switch. I've used it to make pudding a few times, but for the most part it just gets used for rice. The rice sticks a bit, but it soaks clean fairly easily.

We have a slow cooker that a griddle surface that you set the 5-6 quart pan on. We've never used the griddle separately.

Speaking of complex gadgets, our 48" dual fuel range has 4 gas burners plus a grill and a griddle, though we seldom use either of them. Both ovens get used frequently though. We also have as separate 4 burner electric cooktop and an induction cooker. (There's also a 2 burner electric cooktop in the downstairs kitchenette, but I don't recall the last time we used it.)

Both the kitchen and the kitchenette have warming drawers, which we've probably used less than a dozen times combined in 20 years.

There are 2 microwave ovens in the kitchen and another one downstairs, all 3 get used regularly.

And the instant hot water taps (one in the kitchen and another downatairs) both get used a lot.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

My older son uses his pressure cooker to make stock, but I prefer to do it the old fashioned way, roasting then slowly simmering 10 pounds of bones in my big 24 quart pot for 10-12 hours, then straining that, refilling the pot with water and doing the second wetting for another 12 hours. After I combine the two, I let them cool overnight so the fat solidifies, then I reduce it to the point where it starts to jell, and it's ready to use in recipes.

I've gone one step further to make Espagnole sauce, combine it with the stock and reduce it to demiglace, but that's REALLY time-consuming, 3-4 days worth of cooking.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't see the Instant Pot as being high on my list of things to buy right now. I haven't used a pressure cooker in a good 20 years.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't decided yet. I'd sort of like to thumb through the book, but it isn't one that Amazon offers a peek at. It's a 500+ page book that is used as a text by several baking schools, I've already got 2 or 3 books like that.

[Mike Nolan]

Other than using KAF gluten-free flour and adding a little additional Xanthan gum, I didn't change anything. (I'm not sure I needed the extra Xanthan gum, the batter came out rather thick, I probably should have added a bit more buttermilk to thin out the batter a bit, though I'm tempted to add another egg next time, which I think would make it more brownie-like.)

It did seem to take a little longer to bake.

IMHO, the real secret to this cake is to put the frosting on low heat after mixing it and pout it on the cake while the cake is warm. I aim for both the cake and the frosting to be between 130 and 140 degrees when I frost it. This causes the cake to compress a bit, but that makes it seem richer.

[Mike Nolan]

The GF Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake was pretty good, I think if someone wasn't told it was gluten-free, they might not figure that out from the taste.

Both sheet cakes went over pretty good at the pot luck, less than a quarter of each one came back home.

[Mike Nolan]

We had one of those glass fat separators and seldom used it, in large part because it was difficult to clean. It broke and we have not replaced it.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight I made two Texas Chocolate Sheet Cakes, a full sized one (13x17) and a smaller one (10x10) using gluten-free flour, both for my wife's office's end-of-the-school year pot luck.

The GF one looks like it came out OK, but I won't know for sure until my wife brings a piece home with her tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I always break eggs into a custard cup, whether I'm separating them or not. That way if there's a bad egg or if I break the yolk, I haven't ruined the batch. The only thing I have to remember to do is to transfer the yolk and the white to the proper containers, and I've been known to mess THAT up! 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Beef stroganoff for supper tonight here. Used too much wine in the sauce, though.

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